THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
Pitcairn, of recent movie fame; Truk, Yap,
Ponape, and the other mandated islands
which Japan now controls;* and South Sea
isles of song and fiction, such as Tahiti,
Rapa, Tongatabu, whose musical names
have always been magnets to adventurers.
WHEN JAPAN WAS MEXICO'S
"NEIGHBOR"
In 1513 Balboa stood "silent upon a peak
in Darien," first of his race to gaze from
the New World over the boundless waters
of what he called the "Great South Sea."
Years passed before European keel first
furrowed the full breadth of the Pacific.
Then Magellan, in 1520-1, fought through
the stormy strait that now bears his name
into the unknown "Mare Pacificum"-and
heroically sailed on!
Library geographers made his maps.
Drawn from reason and imagination, yet
remarkable for some astute inferences, they
contained other amazing surmises. They
showed Japan approximately where Mexico
should have been.
Drawn to this romantic sea in succeeding
centuries was a glittering parade of explor
ers, buccaneers, whalers, and traders from
every land. Captain James Cook's Pacific
expeditions in the 18th century produced
more knowledge than all that had gone
before. He mapped the Society Islands,
showed New Zealand to be two islands, and
proved conclusively that Australia was not
a mere peninsula of New Guinea.
He
sailed farther south than any previous ex
plorer, he visited the Hawaiian group, and
mapped the shores of what now is Oregon
to northern Alaska. The first comprehen
sive map of the region was his.t
FESTOONS OF ISLANDS
The Pacific's multitudinous islands con
trast strikingly with the Atlantic's insular
poverty. Volcanic chains, clearly strung
together in the Aleutians and along the
western shores, run out in long streamers
across open ocean.
Diagonal deep-sea
archipelagoes are strewn from the East
Indies and Japan across most of the
breadth of the Pacific.
Planet-shaping forces lifted the moun
tainous Samoas, Hawaiians, and Societies
* See "Mysterious Micronesia" (the Japanese
mandated islands), by Willard Price, in THE NA
TIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE for April, 1936.
t See "The Columbus of the Pacific (Capt.
Cook),"
in THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGA
ZINE for January, 1927, and "The Greatest Voy
age in the Annals of the Sea (Magellan)," Decem
ber, 1932, both by J. R. Hildebrand.
above the sea. Yet hundreds of peaks
pushing up from the ocean floor just fail
to reach the surface.
On submerged foundations, patient
hordes of coral polyps have built the Caro
line, Tuamotu, Marshall Islands-and
countless more.
One of the most symmetrical volcanic
islands, Niuafoo, in the Tongas, resembles
a huge doughnut when seen from the air.
Rising some 6,000 feet from the ocean bed
to 800 feet above sea level, it is about five
miles across. A large lake occupies the
central crater of a still-active volcano that
destroyed a village in 1929. Happy Poly
nesians live philosophically on their explo
sive patch of land, compelled, occasionally,
to dodge outpouring lava.
Niuafoo lacks harbors. For years natives
swam out with log floats to the mail boat,
holding outgoing letters in brown paper
packages tied to the tops of sticks. Mail
from "outside," soldered in big biscuit tins,
was dropped into the water and towed
ashore. This postal service, now replaced
by a tender system, has won for Niuafoo
the nickname "Tin Can Island." *
Rich soil, formed from disintegrating
volcanic lava, makes "verdant paradises"
of Tahiti, the Samoas, and other islands
of volcanic structure. Heavy rains carve
jagged skylines in steep ridges. Deep-cut
valleys roar with cascading streams.
The countless South Pacific coral atolls
bear no resemblance to the battlements and
spires of volcanic islands. Low and flat,
they depend on waving coconut palms for
skyline. Tiny, reef-building coral animals,
living in relatively shallow water, leave
myriad stony skeletons when they die. De
scendants build on and upward, gradually
adding their calcareous remnants to the
growing pile. Ocean waves toss up coral
rock and sand, which then is weathered
into soil. Volcanic action often raises the
coral cap of a subterranean peak far above
the sea.f
Northeast of the Solomon Islands, in the
western Pacific, a cluster of islands around
a blue lagoon forms one of the world's larg
est purely coral atolls. This is Ontong
Java, an isolated source of copra, which it
sends to Australia, and of trochus shell,
* See "Living On a Volcano," by Thomas A.
Jaggar, in THE NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC MAGAZINE
for July, 1935.
t See "Coral Castle Builders of Tropic Seas,"
by Roy Waldo Miner, in THE NATIONAL GEO
GRAPHIC MAGAZINE for June, 1934.
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